Revision as of 19:41, 7 September 2006

So i figured how to make Arch do dual boot configuration, and i will share it with you all, even though many of you might not want to use microsoft.

Well to start off, you will need to install windows, i used WinXP. The reason to start with windows, is because it will mess with the MBR(Master Boot Record) if it is not done in this particular order.
Now let's say you have installed WinXP like me, then we boot up the arch installer we pretty much do the same thing here, except a few things:

1.We will have to use logical partitions for some of our partitions, because there can only be up to 4 primary ones.

3. When installing grub, you have to alter the config file that pops up(this is where we make the choice of making WinXP to start up), and make sure to install grub to MBR, will be called hda in my case(sda in scsi case, and so on).

So on to the altering of the config file(a.k.a. menu.list), if you forget to alter the file, it can be found in /boot/grub/menu.lst
REMEMBER: The file is read from the top and down, so the system listed first, will be the one to auto boot, if no keys are pressed during the grub boot screen.
Inhere we already have the configuration of our Arch system, it will look something like this:
title Arch (7.2)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.7-10 ro root=/dev/hda3 hdc=ide-scsi
initrd /initrd-2.4.7-10.img
^^This is already specified, and will not need tampering, but notice "root (hd0,0)", this defines that the root partition is on hd0=disk1 and in 0=partition1(hda1). This is why, if your arch is installed on disk1, partition 3, it will read root (hd0,2). This is because the first control systems, including linux, counts 0 as the first number, not 1!

So here is the need info to put into you menu.lst file:

title Windows XP <<--Can be anything you like, it will just be what is displayed in the grub bootup screen

rootnoverify (hd0,2) <<--Remember the partiton numbers we wrote down, here you write in the partition number of your windows partition, here it is 2, because my windows is on hda3.

chainloader +1 <<--No idea what this does, but better put it there, because people say so :P

Good luck and i hope this helped you, because it took me a long time to figure out :)